Abstract : Background: Chronic pain is difficult, both for the patient and the caregiver. Even though many studies and researches have been conducted (mostly with patients), chronic pain remains. It is suggested that a person-centered approach is the best way to help these patients. However, little is known about how physicians adapt their practice to their powerlessness when faced with chronic pain patient. Which strategies are to be used when the pharmacopoeia is insufficient? Though it is known that religious and spiritual commitments may allow patients to give meaning to their pain, little is known about how physicians deal with these commitments. Purpose: This study explores the factors influencing how physicians take charge of chronic pain patients to understand how their identity, their spirituality and their relationship shape their care approach. Methods: Within a qualitative research design in grounded theory, the conceptual framework developed is based on the two key concepts: the narrative identity by Ricœur and the concept of time by Tillich. Participants were recruited using a convenience sampling. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with seven physicians in various specialties dealing with the difficulties of chronic pain management. Four of them were interviewed a second time to further investigate the subjet, until data saturation. The transcripts were analyzed by Strauss and Corbin’s method of codification. Results: If the time factor was theoretically known from the literature on chronic pain, continuous and simultaneous data collecting and analyzing has brought its emergence as concept (axial coding), revealing thereby its implicit crucial importance within the therapeutic relationship. Our approach, inspired from both theological and philosophical anthropology‘s frames, have allowed us to identify “recognition” as an emerging process to explain the flow scheme of the physician’s professional and personal identity when faced with chronic pain. Although not researched explicitly, mutual recognition between patient and physician is a source of motivation to improve the quality of the relationship. The process of recognition to mutual re-co-birth (“re-co-naissance” in French) is proposed here as an explanatory framework for the development of the physician’s identity in the clinical context of chronic pain patient care. The French word “reconnaissance” (recognition) thus can be broken down into “re-co-naissance” (re-co-birth), the co-rebirth of a relationship to define oneself anew as a therapist and to not experience failure. Conclusions: The new acquired confidence and competence between physician and the patient, in addition to actual professional skills, enables the concerned physician not only to enrich his knowledge but also to make progress in time, along with his chronic pain patients, moving from professional identity to spiritual recognition and to a dynamic relationship of mutal re-birth and re-acknowledge (“re-co-naissance”), so that he no longer experiences medical failure. Various perspectives for clinicians and caregivers will be further discussed.